Anger spread rapidly across the Chinese Internet following remembrances posted by friends of Gao commemorating the twenty year anniversary of her death on Tomb Sweeping Day this year, when Chinese traditionally commemorate the dead.

Anger against Shen Yang, with Gao’s story being shared millions of times online, eventually led Nanjing University, where Shen currently teaches, to terminate Shen’s contract. Shen has been condemned by a number of universities and Peking University has vowed to do more about sexual harassment in the future. An open letter calling attention to the issue of sexual harassment has also been signed by professors from over 30 university and students and alumni from 50 universities. Shen, however, continues to defend himself, claiming that Gao was mentally ill, having remained quite vocal on the issue through the years.

Photo of Gao Yan when she was alive

Another former student of Shen’s, Xu Hongyun, has also come forward to allege sexual assault by Shen when considering Shen for her Ph. D advisor, stating that this contributed to her decision not to pursue further graduate studies. This was, however, deleted by state censors. A document has also emerged purporting to be Peking University’s report on Gao’s suicide, stating that Shen was not guilty for Gao’s death, claiming that Gao was mentally ill, and ordering Shen to only make an apology.

Li Youyou, one of Gao’s friends who posted a widely circulated essay commemorating Gao, has stated that four other victims of sexual assault by Shen have approached her. Current Peking University students have organized to call on the administration to make the full matters of the case public, following an essay published by a current Peking University student, Deng Yuhao, which has led to confrontations between Peking University students and administrators.

In particular, sexual harassment policies have been slow to catch on in China. Although the Chinese government has touted gender equality going back to the Mao period, actually existing social conditions make it clear that patriarchy remains deeply entrenched in China. The concept of sexual harassment has been slow to be introduced into law, the term sexual harassment only being introduced into law in 2005 but remaining vague in terms of definition after China’s first sexual harassment case was dismissed in 2001.

Posters calling for the release of the Feminist Five in 2015. Photo credit: Free Chinese Feminists/Facebook

Namely, the Chinese state fears dissent and social unrest in any form, including from outrage over sexual harassment and assaults in universities. After all, while outrage has remained confined to universities, seen as privileged bastions of learning in China, the possibility for outrage to expand in scope is large. Misogynistic attitudes remain entrenched in society, as observed in social criticism against unmarried “leftover women” and demeaning views about “leftover women” expressed by state-run women’s organizations in the past.

Whatever the restrictions that the Chinese government may seek to impose on Chinese netizens’ access to the outside world, China is sufficiently connected to the international world through the Internet that online campaigns such as the #MeToo movement reverberate in China. However, the Chinese government generally reacts badly against any form of social unrest. Because of its partial inspiration from the western phenomenon of #MeToo, the Chinese government, for example, may construe the present campaign in connection with western attempts to undermine China, much as it did western support for the Feminist Five.

As such, how the Chinese government reacts to the wave of anger regarding deep-rooted problems of sexual assault going forward remains to be seen. And it remains to be seen whether netizens will eventually have to move activity online off of the Internet and move towards real-world actions. Netizens simply continue to post articles at a rate faster than the Chinese government can censor, but the trend shows no sign of stopping and outrage shows no sign of abating, at least for the time being. Has the genie has finally been let out of the bottle.

Brian Hioe was one of the founding editors of New Bloom. He is a freelance writer on social movements and politics, and occasional translator. A New York native and Taiwanese-American, he has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature. He was Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2017 to 2018.

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About New Bloom

New Bloom is an online magazine covering activism and youth politics in Taiwan and the Asia Pacific, founded in Taiwan in 2014 in the wake of the Sunflower Movement. We seek to put local voices in touch with international discourse, beginning with Taiwan.